So Says

Gaston Garcia Cantu

His outspoken analysis and criticism of government affairs have made his column in the daily newspaper Excelsior one of the most widely read in Mexico. He was interviewed in Mexico City, which is still littered with rubble from the Sept. 19 earthquake that took as many as 8,000 lives

Q: Some Mexican editorial writers have argued that the failure of the government to fulfill the people's immediate needs in the wake of the earthquake has led Mexicans to band together and cast off what has been described as a submissive mentality. A: It is easy to hold prejudices and misconceptions about a population, like ours, that has suffered long periods of colonization. The psychological makeup of the Mexican people is not a submissive one. And it never has been. The Aztecs, who finally fell in 1521, were never, in fact, defeated by the strength of the Spaniards alone. Thirty thousand indigenes that had joined up with the Spanish to demolish the Aztec empire wound up being the key factor.

Q: And the ensuing centuries of colonization--isn't that the sort of submission some of your colleagues referred to? A: Historically, a colonized people is a subjugated people. That's very different from being submissive. The Mexican people lost their independence but never surrendered their desire for freedom. They have made three great revolutions, those of 1810, 1855 and 1910. They are a people struggling for possession of the land, and they have not hesitated to rise up with, and at times without, arms.

Q: It is generally thought that the inability of Anastasio Somoza to respond to the 1972 earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua, led ultimately to his overthrow seven years later. Might the earthquake in Mexico have a similar effect?

A: The situation here is more complex. Nicaragua is a small country. Mexico has a population of more than 70 million, very important industrial achievements, vast cultural development and, in spite of its shortcomings, a sophisticated educational system. This makes for a much more complex and contradictory situation. The privileged have differences among themselves, as do the middle classes and the poor. This means that, in the face of a disaster such as the earthquake, there wasn't a uniform response.

Q: Then the earthquake was just another in a series of natural disasters that have marked Mexican history?

A: No. It happened to take place in a time of profound political, economic and social crisis in Mexico. Under normal conditions, it would only have caused death, injury and destruction, something always lamentable. But this quake was made much worse by the present crisis. The complete destruction of so many buildings in the poor neighborhoods of the capital, neighborhoods in which workers and artisans live with their families, made public for all who cared to notice the subhuman conditions in which these people were living and working. Even in some of the more modern buildings, the disaster revealed that people had been working in conditions comparable to those of English millworkers at the time of the Industrial Revolution. After the buildings collapsed in the textile district, it became clear that seamstresses were laboring without workplace rights, without social security and under deplorable conditions. The resulting scandal revealed that these were the conditions demanded by their employers: They were not to have finished primary school; they were not to have any political or social activism; and they were not to be involved in any union activity. And while these conditions were consistent with the rise of industrial capitalism, they have no place in modern Mexican society. The United States must understand these Mexican realities. Otherwise it would seem that our problems are strictly a result of our confusion, our ignorance, our disorganization--and that's not the case.

Q: How do Mexicans see themselves in the aftermath of the earthquake?

A: In Mexico City, information abounds. But the social inequalities are so great that those in other parts of the country live as they did in the mid-19th Century. I believe that millions of Mexican campesinos hardly know that the earthquake even took place. Its effects on these people, nevertheless, will be grave and dramatic. The rebuilding of Mexico City, and the servicing of the foreign debt, will mean for the average Mexican campesino limits on his salary, limits on credits needed for planting. It will mean fewer roads, less drinking water and less water for irrigation because there will be fewer dams constructed; less electrification, fewer schools, teachers and books. Inevitably, all Mexicans will be affected, and many of them will severely feel the crisis without ever knowing the reasons behind it. The social aftershocks of Sept. 19 are going to be felt for years to come.